went to an ethnomusicology conference today at the British Library. it hit me while I was there that my Dad went to gradschool fopr ethnomusicology. and here I kind of end up doing ethnomusicology without knowing it. It was an interesting mix of people. All of them very concerned about music and ethical issues and archives and recording techniques. And intellectual property discussions come up all the time, especially as they all want to publish field recordings but immediately run into copyright issues. ah, property. if not theft, it's at least a mare's nest, a can of worms.

can't believe I'm still awake. went to Dekefex last night, mostly rawkus hiphop in one room, and drumnbass in the other. stayed until 5am, and as it was in Brixton, took 2 night buses and got home at 6:30, slept for 3 hours and went to the conference. It must have been damn interesting, because I stayed awake for the whole thing. The night was pretty fun. Went with MHB and his gurlfriend. actually MHB is one of those people, someone I really vibe well with, but just a totally unreliable person. And now there's awkwardness because I voluntarily put myself in a position where I depended on him and he absolutely let me down in the flakiest possible way. This was actually the first time, since that incident, that we've actively hung out. he's still a greta guy in all kinds of ways, but I'm still a little burnt. anyway. the hiphop was okay. one of the mcs I'm sure was from boston, he had that abstract intellectual looping flow. and later the ppl under the stairs, from SF, played. were ok. The London djs, though. I dunno. something about the london appreciation of hiphop i just don't get. like a) they mix super commercial silliness with conscious stuff, seemingly unwittingly, all the time. and then whenever someone drops a Public Enemy tune, or KRS-1, everyone goes oooooh. now PE are the greatest, but I don't need to hear them in a club, especially not their most obvious and well-known tunes, and not every single hiphop night. All the stuff they call 'oldschool' is usually just obvious hits from the 90s. I dunno. colour me a snob but it feels like they have no taste. Man, DJ zinc can still tear up the drumnbass floor, though, even if his new single is goddamn 'underground garridge.' (feh!) It wasn't overcrowded in the dnb room, either. danced a lot, ate an apple I remembered I brought. watched the crowd. big up the Lady MC, as well. she tore it up. yawnnn. okay running out of steam at last. night all.

Nov 15 00 we saw "Shadow of the Vampire" as part of the london film festival. Film about murnau (played by malkovich) filming Nosferatu (played by Willem Dafoe). amazing. strange and funny. dafoe was creepy and sad and wonderful. and it contains the best piece of film criticism-wihin-a-film... Defoe's vampire gives the best take on the book Dracula that I've ever read. really shows you why criticism can be interesting. lovely film! and visually great. scenes straight from the original nosferatu slide seamlessly into colour and the actress drops the sweetgirl face and pouts for a cigarette. murnau as mad scientist megalomaniac. shades of 'heart of darkness-the making of apocalypse now' kept rising in my mind.

Also saw "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." One of the best films I've seen. left us with stars in our eyes unable to speak, afterwards. we had tried to see it on the first night. Got to the standby line 45 minutes before doors, and it was round the corner. Heard of a second show the next afternoon, and arrived 1 hour early. Still a line, but we sucked it up for the whole damn time. got 2 of the last seats as it began. fantasy kungfu set in medieval china. great acting, good plot, unbelievable visuals. ang lee makes you fall in love with the landscape, the deserts, the mountains the forests. colours of nature call and sigh, fabrics gleam and shift with heavy embroidery. the fight scenes are graceful and elegant, and the acting is worked into them, so you learn about their characters through their battle styles, their interactions and personalities clear in every blow and counterblow. people fly! and they fly like you do in dreams, where you run and there's more lift between your steps, and where you look your foot just touches and there you go. a real prize, this one. when it's generally released, I'm there again.

LDL and I caught a lot of nightlife, of which more later. funnily enough, he also introduced me to a new but way too expensive pastime. I now have another mental map of east and westend london, alongside the cafe map, the cinema map, the club and squat map, i have the shoot-things-games map. nearly every day, we'd step into a sad noisy but empty-of-humans room, drop an embarassing number of coins in the machines and blast away. I'm pretty terrible, but i do find it fun. I dunno if I'd go on my own, because of the lonelyman vibe I got in there. plus I'm bad enough that it would be quite expensive. but amusing. blammo!

Nov 14 00 regular updates resume as i said goodbye to my sweetheart at the airport this morning. sad me. yes indeed.

had gone to see friends dj and chill at the little bar that used to be a public restroom -last night.. LDL packed up afterwards. less than four hours later we scraped ourselves out of bed to try to get to hearthrow for a 10:30 flight. took a bus counterintuitively AWAY from central london, northwest, to outsmart commuters and get on the picadilly line straight to heathrow from way out at Manor House. got to MH in time to snag some bagels from the shop by the tube station, and got to the platform. the first three trains were too full for us to even try to get on with LDL's respectably huge suitcase. but we finally made it and settled in dazedly for over an hour through london's morning rush-hour. dozed and drooled and read the paper. wolfed down our bagels while in line at the checkin desk at heathrow while LDL cursed the crowds. not a morning person, he. said goodbye with overlapping kisses. looks and quick touches. tore ourselves away. I tried to be all stoic and walked off to hide in a newsstand and pick out a book to hide in for the rest of the day. then ran back after it was too late to call him, and watched the back of his head move through the crowd. his yellow courier bag. his profile, briefly, then gone.

drowned my sorrows in soho at a very nice patisserie that is laid back and quiet. went to the upstairs garrety room, curled up with my book and had an eclair and cafe au lait. read dazedly until I ran into an acqauintance, A woman I've always had a nice vibe with. she actually seemed lonely, so i hitched on to her day for a while and we walked around covent garden and chatted. left her at St. Martins, picked up some tomato soup, for soup-and-toasted-cheese comfort and ice cream for dessert. wah. just had a bath. all the nice things I can think of except for him. they are still pleasures, but a bit melancholy ones now.

despite LDL's near-inability or to be more fair extreme unwillingness to get up before noon, we did less than we'd planned, but looking back we did a fair amount. especially at night. saw some amazing films. will summarize them later. bed now. it's too big again.

Nov 8 00 just got back from a Digital Hardcore show. though we had fun, they came off badly. for people that talk a lot of shit about revolution, they acted like brats. We waited in line for 45 minutes before the doorpeople told us no-ticket-holders they were sold out. it became clear that they were doing that old trick of holding off selling new tix until all the presolds had come in, and they kept saying sold out to weed out the line. most people left. LDL got all stubborn so we stood there for 30 more minutes or so. meanwhile, at least TWICE as many people came in on the guest list as those who had tickets. it was actually closer to three times, considering the guests were usually in groups of 2 or 3.. ridicualous. more like a private party with a few paying spots for the peons, otherwise known as the fans without connections. LDL and I were at the front of the non-tickets line, and eventually --EVENTUALLY-- our perseverance paid off and we got inside. the space was great, a crumblywalled cement structure with exposed girders and such, metal dropdoors in the floor. a long narrow room and a bar at the back. Small stage had some very young DHR people on when we came in, dunno who. not very prepossessing. then Lolita Storm came on, three girlies with mics and a guy on the machines. they also had little presence. I like a lot of the beats in DHR stuff, but I also always wonder what the point of a live show is. I mean most of the most interesting things are prerecorded. Unless you have serious stage presence and/or play instruments why bother to stand up there? EC8OR were much better. lots of stage presence and more shape to their songs. they held onto their scene pretty well, and only the fact that the girl fell into the boy and they both fell over revealed how absolutely plastered they were on something or other. But there were also some pretty long gaps between the acts. after much too long a horrible group of mostly english guys in states of near or total nudity or costumes came up, and read stuff off papers they held in their hands. they sucked. had some puppet action too, but it sucked as well. LDL got irked at this stage, and drank more than usual, and started heckling them. had a little rant to me as well, about feeling cheated and about how 'un-hardcore' it was. he has particular sorta politicised associations with that word, with the new england hc-punk past of his.. plus we had stood around in the cold for over an hour, not really to see these jokers. And after them, Alec Empire took forgoddamever. Others started heckling as well. We all waited and waited. some people left. LDL got more irate. AE finally came out and pouted around with the mic. then played a pretty good set of records. I didn't realise he was going to be djing. actually think he might not have planned to but had technical difficulties or some such. still, someone should have said something. apologised or said they had tech issues or something. not very revolutionary to let all your pals and industry people in free, keep the rest waiting the cold unless they have credit cards or bought early, then piss around for 30-40 minutes in between sets without telling anyone what's going on. bleh. very bratty attitude. AE can dj like a motherfucker though, when he wants to.